Yes, and Google can shut down your app or entire account for no reason at all and you have no right to complain about it, because free market capitalism.
Parler learned a hard lesson to not depend on AWS. I bet a lot of AWS customers also saw that and began taking steps to either move off of AWS or at least make it easy to migrate if needed.
And politics aside, if a client had a bad moderation policy or refused to moderate their content per my standard, then I should be allowed to terminate the contract. They should then be free to choose another provider.
And do what, exactly?
AWS can afford to be sued for hosting a forum or the costs of a boycott for hosting Stormfront - a smaller provider could easily be wiped out.
Edited to add the following.
Most of this post was wrong. ttt0 is right that section 230 protects providers in the cases I mentioned. TIL about the scope of section 230 provider protection.
I don't get why people think that the government here can actually do anything without severely impinging on personal freedoms. As a government contractor, I see first hand how f'ing useless our cronyist, bureaucratic government is. Anything they try to do will backfire and make things worse for the average citizen.
The only real solution is to get people to stop treating facebook like the one and only place for messaging people or posting things. They're only "overlords" so long as people only use facebook or twitter.
> banks, domain registrars, payment processors, cloud services, DDOS protection services etc.
> As a government contractor, I see first hand how f'ing useless our cronyist, bureaucratic government is. Anything they try to do will backfire and make things worse for the average citizen.
I don't completely disagree with you there either, but it will also get just worse and worse if you don't take any action at all. Pick your poison, I guess?
If 1A was extended to private individuals and entities, should the NFL be forced to keep Colin Kaepernick employed after taking a knee?
If it did I wouldn't be here arguing that it should. And let's stop pretending like we are so considered about the private sector and private companies aren't ever subjected to any regulations whatsoever.
> If 1A was extended to private individuals and entities, should the NFL be forced to keep Colin Kaepernick employed after taking a knee?
I honestly couldn't care less about some sports controversies. I'm talking specifically about the banks and basic services like I listed. They simply shouldn't be allowed to gang up on anyone and remove you from a polite society just like that.
I didn't ask if you did, I provided an excellent example of what you're describing.
In your scenario, the 1A would prohibit a business (the NFL), from restricting speech by an employee (Kapernick). This principle is what you're in favor of, correct?
"DDOS protection services" are not a "basic" service for the majority of private entities. So how is your new 1A written to prohibit DDOS protection companies from restricting speech?
I'm not trying to be mean, but what part of this statement should I clarify for you to understand? Should barbershops be subjected to the regulations of auto industry? It doesn't make any sense.
> "DDOS protection services" are not a "basic" service for the majority of private entities. So how is your new 1A written to prohibit DDOS protection companies from restricting speech?
I'm not talking about literally rewriting the 1A, I'm taking about regulating the tech industry.
what part of this statement should I clarify for you to understand
I'm taking about regulating the tech industry
Are you dodging the NFL example so hard because the NFL would be excluded from your legislation? They have $91B market cap and actively develop new tech.
https://operations.nfl.com/gameday/technology/technology-and...
> banks, domain registrars, payment processors, cloud services, DDOS protection services etc.
If you expect me to come up on a spot with a bunch of legalspeak to precisely define what would be the target of such legislation(s), it's not going to happen as I am not a lawyer. If you disagree with my opinion and you think that tech companies like the ones listed above and most importantly the banks should be able to just arbitrarily shut down anyone they dislike in the era of Covid, just say so. But don't give me that hairsplitting in an attempt to portray it as something that's either impossible or "illogical" to do, as it's simply not true and this entire argument is just stupid, if not dishonest. It's just semantics.
Yes. If you want to be served by good companies who genuinely value you as a customer because they view doing business with you as beneficial, that's the easiest way to get there.
The alternative is bad companies providing the worst possible service they legally can to customers they don't really want because the law forces them to, which makes it more difficult for good companies to compete with them for market share.
But if the bad companies arbitrarily refuse to do business with anyone they dislike, the rejected customers will go to the good companies instead, which helps them grow and improve their service.
Note that this is exactly what happened with Parler: "bad" AWS refused them, so they went to a "good" hoster instead.
We are already here. Generally speaking this is most often true when the client is forced to use certain services, not the other way around. Like public healthcare or public institutions in general. On the other hand, in Europe my bank is legally obligated to provide me a basic service and they treated me very nicely whenever I had any problems, I can't complain. Also we can circle back to the Google example - they treat everyone like garbage precisely because they can arbitrarily shut down anyone, anytime, for no reason at all.
> Note that this is exactly what happened with Parler: "bad" AWS refused them, so they went to a "good" hoster instead.
Almost everyone, if not everyone, does the same thing. Parler will either have to become just a second Twitter or they will be kicked off their new hosting too.
Most likely you're not the kind of customer they'd rather not be doing business with.
> they treat everyone like garbage precisely because they can arbitrarily shut down anyone
Do you expect them to treat people they'd prefer to shut down better than garbage if they weren't allowed to shut them down?
> Parler will either have to become just a second Twitter or they will be kicked off their new hosting too.
Is there nobody among Parler's millions of users who'd be able and willing to host them so they don't have to worry about alignment of interests anymore?
Yes, because they would at least have to come up with a valid reason for refusing you a service. You won't just wake up one day to see everything completely gone, without any explanation.
> Is there nobody among Parler's millions of users who'd be able and willing to host them so they don't have to worry about alignment of interests anymore?
Maybe there is, I don't know. But it doesn't end on hosting. Even if you manage to successfully keep your hosting, someone else will come after you. Like the domain registrar, payment processor, DDOS protection and the final bosses - Visa and MasterCard.
I'm "dodging" the NFL example, because again, I do not care about NFL. At all
I'm taking about regulating the tech industry
Are banks the "tech" industry? No, of course not. So you move the goalposts back to "just the tech companies!" when you lose.
Your example is not "perfect", it's stupid. No, NFL doesn't count as a tech industry and it's not in scope of what I want to regulate. I told you what types of services should be regulated since the very beginning, but you just keep arguing semantics whether the banks are a part of tech industry or not. I'm not even talking about Twitter or Facebook here and these are the tech companies. No, banks aren't tech industry either. The definition of a "tech company" doesn't really matter in what I'm arguing for. It was to very roughly describe what I mean. And there is nothing else I can do if you're unable to argue in good faith.
Google is totally allowed to terminate your account for no reason, but it's still considered a dick move.
There you go. Signing up to their services means that you are aware of the terms and conditions and it includes termination of service for any reason. Tough.
> If you don't like google's behaviour, then you should either be self-hosting or at least diversify with other providers.
They didn't listen to us when GitHub kept going down nor did they listen when Google took Element and Mastodon's apps off the Play Store (The outrage was visible). Oh well, its their platform and they are private companies, blah blah blah.
I guess when rvz was screaming for self-hosting and having control over your own infrastructure as possible, others said AWS, GCP and Azure made it a point and click setup and 'It's just easier because someone else is the sys-admin and its not my server'.
We learn the hard way I guess.